Aliza's chronicles, part 4: collaboration, quick and easy

Posted by: Aliza Sherman, author, speaker, TV and radio producer

In my last post, I talked about using Google Docs for long-term collaboration. But what about quick collaboration for one or two documents? Keeping track of them is not the issue, but I've found plenty of reasons to use Docs for quick collaboration.

Recently, someone asked me to review a press release for their nonprofit organization. Since I like to do pro-bono work for good causes, I was happy to do it and simply uploaded it to Docs, made my edits, then pointed her to it. Voila! Done.

Also in the last few weeks, I started working on a rough Table of Contents to land a new book deal and have asked another writer to co-author the book with me. With me in Alaska and her on the East Coast, I knew that email and the occasional phone call would be all we’d need. But I was wrong. We needed Docs.

We each took a stab at the TOC, then I uploaded both versions and used one of the versions as the foundation for the collaborative draft. Then I discovered another feature.

When I went to save the document so I could email it to my book agent, I remembered the "attach the document as a PDF" feature, so I sent it to her directly from Docs. That particular book project my agent was pitching me and my writer friend for did not pan out. But, we realized we'd make a great team as we worked together on Google Docs. We are now in the process of collaborating on a new book proposal -- so what started out as a quick collaboration may soon become long-term.

Next time, I'll discuss how Google Docs can enhance one's...guilty pleasures.